5-Day Notice Illinois: The Complete Guide to Eviction Notices
▾
The 5-Day Notice: Non-Payment of Rent
The 10-Day Notice: Lease Violations
The 30-Day Notice: Ending a Tenancy
How to Properly Serve an Eviction Notice
Common Mistakes That Get Notices Thrown Out
Notice Requirements by County
What Happens After You Serve the Notice
Frequently Asked Questions
Download Free Notice Templates
A DuPage County landlord called me last month. His tenant was four months behind on rent, and he’d served a 30-Day Notice because he wanted the tenant gone. Wrong move. A 30-Day Notice is for ending a tenancy when the tenant hasn’t done anything wrong. For unpaid rent, Illinois law requires a 5-Day Notice. He’d wasted a month, and now he had to start the entire process over from scratch.
This is the most common mistake I see landlords make, and I handle over 150 eviction cases a year across Cook, DuPage, Kane, and Will counties. The notice is the foundation of your entire eviction case. Get it wrong and everything that follows collapses: your court filing, your hearing, your judgment. All of it depends on a notice that was correct from day one.
Illinois has three eviction notices, each tied to a specific legal situation. This guide covers all three: the 5-Day Notice for unpaid rent, the 10-Day Notice for lease violations, and the 30-Day Notice for ending a tenancy. I’ll walk you through the exact legal requirements for each one, show you how to properly serve them, explain how the rules change depending on which county your property is in, and flag the mistakes I see landlords make over and over again that get their cases thrown out of court.
If you want to skip ahead and download the notice forms, I’ve included free templates at the bottom. But I’d recommend reading the service requirements first. The notice itself is the easy part. Getting it to the tenant in a way that holds up in court is where most landlords go wrong.
Which Eviction Notice Do You Need in Illinois?
Illinois law requires landlords to serve a written notice before filing an eviction lawsuit. The type of notice depends entirely on why you’re evicting. There is no generic “eviction notice” in Illinois, and if you use the wrong type, the court will dismiss your case. You’ll have to start the notice period over from the beginning.
Non-Payment of Rent
Your tenant owes rent. This notice demands payment within five days or the lease terminates.
Lease Violations
Unauthorized occupants, pets, property damage, illegal activity. Gives tenants 10 days to fix the problem or face eviction.
Termination of Tenancy
Tenant hasn’t done anything wrong but you want to end the tenancy. In Chicago, extends to 60 or 120 days for long-term tenants.
The 5-Day Notice: Non-Payment of Rent
The 5-Day Notice is the most commonly filed eviction notice in Illinois. Under 735 ILCS 5/9-209, when a tenant falls behind on rent, the landlord must serve a written demand giving the tenant five days to pay the outstanding balance or vacate the property.
What the 5-Day Notice Must Include
- The tenant’s full name
- The address of the rental property, including the unit number
- The exact amount of rent owed, broken down by month if multiple months are unpaid
- A clear statement that the tenant has five days to pay the full balance
- A statement that the lease will terminate if the balance is not paid within five days
- The landlord’s name and signature
- The date the notice was prepared
What the 5-Day Notice Should NOT Include
Do not lump in late fees, utility charges, or other amounts the tenant might owe under the lease. Courts regularly throw out 5-Day Notices that demand more than the base rent because the landlord inflated the total with fees that don’t technically qualify as “rent.”
If your tenant owes $1,200 in back rent and $150 in late fees, the 5-Day Notice should demand $1,200. You can pursue the late fees separately, but mixing them into the notice gives the tenant’s attorney an easy argument to get your case dismissed.
When the Five Days Start Running
The five-day clock starts the day after the notice is served. If you serve the notice on a Monday, day one is Tuesday. Weekends and holidays count toward the five days under the statute. If day five falls on a weekend or court holiday, the tenant technically has until the next business day to pay.
If the tenant pays the full balance within the five days, the notice is cured and the tenancy continues. You cannot refuse a full payment during the cure period and proceed with eviction anyway. But if they offer only part of what’s owed, you have a decision to make. Accepting a partial payment during the notice period can be interpreted as waiving the notice, depending on the circumstances and the judge. I generally tell my clients to refuse partial payments during the cure period if they’re serious about proceeding with the eviction.
The Rent Must Actually Be Due
This sounds obvious, but I’ve seen it happen. If your lease says rent is due on the first, you cannot serve a 5-Day Notice on the first. The rent becomes past due after the first, and you can serve the notice on the second. Most landlords wait a few days, but legally, you’re within your rights to serve it as soon as any grace period in your lease expires. If there’s no grace period in the lease, the day after the due date is fair game.
The 10-Day Notice: Lease Violations
The 10-Day Notice under 735 ILCS 5/9-210 covers lease violations other than non-payment of rent. If your tenant is keeping an unauthorized pet, has moved in extra occupants who aren’t on the lease, is causing property damage, or is otherwise violating a specific term of the lease agreement, the 10-Day Notice is the correct form.
The Cure Period
Unlike the 5-Day Notice, which is strictly pay-or-leave, the 10-Day Notice gives the tenant a chance to fix the violation. If the lease says no pets and your tenant has a dog, the 10-Day Notice tells them they have 10 days to remove the dog. If they do, the notice is cured and the tenancy continues.
This cure period is critical. If you skip straight to filing a lawsuit without giving the tenant a genuine opportunity to correct the violation, the court will dismiss your case. The 10-Day Notice is not a formality you rush through. It’s a legal requirement that the tenant had fair warning and a real chance to comply.
Exceptions to the Cure Period
Not every lease violation comes with a cure opportunity. Under Illinois law, certain violations are severe enough that the landlord can proceed without offering time to fix them.
Drug manufacturing or distribution on the premises does not get a cure period. If your tenant is running a drug operation out of the unit, you can proceed directly after serving the 10-Day Notice without waiting for a correction. The same applies to conduct that poses an imminent threat to the safety of other tenants or the property itself. If a tenant’s behavior is genuinely dangerous, courts have upheld proceeding without a cure opportunity. That said, I always recommend documenting the threat thoroughly before taking that position, because the burden of proving the exception falls on you.
Be Specific About the Violation
A well-drafted 10-Day Notice for an unauthorized occupant would reference the lease paragraph that limits occupants, name the unauthorized person if known, and state that the tenant has 10 days to bring the unit into compliance by having the unauthorized occupant vacate. The more specific you are in the notice, the harder it is for the tenant to argue they didn’t understand what they needed to fix.
The 30-Day Notice: Ending a Tenancy
The 30-Day Notice under 735 ILCS 5/9-207 is the notice you use when you want to terminate a tenancy but the tenant hasn’t violated the lease or fallen behind on rent. Maybe the lease expired and you don’t want to renew. Maybe you have a month-to-month tenant you want to move on from. Maybe you’re selling the property or renovating the unit.
This is the only notice form you can use when the tenant hasn’t misbehaved. If there’s no unpaid rent and no lease violation, you cannot serve a 5-Day or 10-Day Notice just because you want the property back. It’s a 30-Day situation.
Chicago and Cook County: The Fair Notice Complication
Tenancies under six months: 30 days’ notice.
Tenancies six months or more: 60 days’ notice.
Tenancies three years or longer: 120 days’ notice.
Suburban Cook County caps the extended requirement at 60 days for tenancies over six months. The 120-day requirement applies only within Chicago city limits.
DuPage and Kane counties require only 30 days regardless of how long the tenant has been there.
These extended notice periods are one of the biggest sources of dismissals in Chicago eviction court. A landlord serves a 30-Day Notice to a tenant who has lived in the unit for two years, and the case gets thrown out because the Fair Notice Ordinance required 60 days. That’s two more months of waiting before you can even refile.
Chicago Just Cause Protections
If your property is covered by the Chicago RLTO (Residential Landlord and Tenant Ordinance), you should also be aware of just cause eviction protections that may apply. Chicago has been expanding tenant protections in recent years, and the rules around no-fault terminations continue to evolve. I wrote a detailed breakdown of how the RLTO affects landlords that covers the specific requirements. If you’re a Chicago landlord ending a tenancy without cause, I’d recommend talking to a Chicago landlord attorney before serving the notice to make sure you’re compliant with the most current requirements.
Not sure which notice you need? Call us. The consultation is free, and we’ll prepare your notice at no charge as part of a full eviction case.
How to Properly Serve an Eviction Notice in Illinois
The notice itself is the easy part. Getting it to the tenant in a way that will hold up in court is where most eviction cases go sideways. Under 735 ILCS 5/9-211, Illinois law recognizes several service methods, and they are not all interchangeable. There is a hierarchy, and courts expect you to follow it.
Personal Service
This is the gold standard, and it’s the method I recommend whenever possible. You physically hand the notice to the tenant. If you can get the notice into their hands, you have the strongest possible proof of service.
The question I get asked constantly: does the tenant have to sign for it? No. The tenant does not need to sign anything, acknowledge receipt, or even read the notice in front of you. Your affidavit of service stating that you delivered the notice to the tenant at a specific date, time, and location is sufficient. Even if the tenant later claims they never received it, your sworn affidavit establishes service.
If you can bring a witness when you serve the notice, even better. A neutral third party (not a family member or business partner) who can testify that they saw you hand the document to the tenant makes your service essentially bulletproof.
Substitute Service
If the tenant isn’t available for personal service, Illinois allows substitute service. You can deliver the notice to another person of suitable age and discretion who resides at the property. “Suitable age and discretion” generally means an adult or a mature teenager who can reasonably be expected to pass the notice along to the tenant.
When you use substitute service, you must also mail a copy of the notice to the tenant via first-class mail. Both steps are required. Handing the notice to the tenant’s roommate without also mailing a copy is defective service.
Abode Service (Nail and Mail)
You can only use abode service after personal service and substitute service have both been attempted and failed. You cannot tape a notice to someone’s door as your first move. I don’t care how many old-timer landlords told you it’s fine, and I don’t care what you read on a landlord forum somewhere. If the tenant is living in the unit and you haven’t tried to hand them the notice first, abode service will not hold up. Your case will get dismissed.
Abode service means taping or affixing the notice to the door of the tenant’s unit and mailing a copy via first-class mail. The appropriate use of abode service is when your tenant has been actively avoiding service for over two weeks and refusing mail, when the property appears to be abandoned, or when there are unknown occupants you’ve been unable to identify or contact. If you know your tenant’s name, you should be attempting personal service first.
Certified Mail
You can serve an eviction notice by certified mail, which requires the tenant to sign for delivery. The advantage is the documented paper trail through the return receipt (the green card). The disadvantage is obvious: tenants who know an eviction is coming will simply refuse to sign, and then you have nothing.
If you go the certified mail route, keep the green return receipt card. You’ll need it when you file your case.
When the Notice Period Begins
For personal and substitute service, the notice period starts the day after service. For abode service and certified mail, courts generally start the clock from the date of mailing or posting, though some judges add a day or two to account for mail delivery time. The safest practice is to build an extra day or two into your count before filing the lawsuit.
Common Mistakes That Get Illinois Eviction Notices Thrown Out
After handling hundreds of eviction cases, these are the errors I see over and over. Every single one results in a dismissed case and a restart of the entire notice period, which means more months of lost rent.
Wrong notice type. A landlord wants the tenant gone for keeping an unauthorized pet, so they serve a 5-Day Notice demanding rent payment. The tenant is current on rent. The case gets dismissed because the correct notice for a lease violation is a 10-Day Notice. This happens far more often than you’d think.
Inflated amounts on the 5-Day Notice. The tenant owes $2,400 in back rent, so the landlord writes the 5-Day Notice demanding $2,400 plus $600 in late fees and $200 in “damages.” The notice now demands amounts beyond what qualifies as rent under the statute. Dismissed.
Defective service. The landlord tapes the notice to the door without attempting personal service first. Or serves it on the tenant’s twelve-year-old. Or mails it via regular mail instead of certified. Each of these gives the tenant grounds to challenge service, and judges in Cook County enforce service requirements strictly.
Wrong notice period for Chicago long-term tenants. The landlord serves a standard 30-Day Notice to a tenant who has lived in the unit for eight years. Chicago’s Fair Notice Ordinance requires 120 days for tenancies over three years. Dismissed, and now the landlord has to wait four months instead of one before they can refile.
Filing the lawsuit too early. The notice period hasn’t fully expired when the landlord files the Forcible Entry and Detainer complaint. Even one day early gets the case thrown out. Count your days carefully, and when in doubt, wait an extra day before filing. One extra day of patience is far cheaper than restarting the process.
Missing required information. The notice doesn’t include the full property address with unit number, the specific amount owed, or the landlord’s signature. These are technical deficiencies, but courts enforce them strictly, especially in Cook County where judges tend to favor tenant protections.
Accepting rent during the cure period. After serving a 5-Day Notice, the landlord accepts a partial rent payment from the tenant because they need the money. Some courts interpret this as waiving the notice entirely, forcing the landlord to start over with a new 5-Day Notice for the remaining balance. I covered the legal mechanics of accepting late rent payments through Zelle and other apps in detail, including accidental acceptance traps.
Eviction Notice Requirements by County
Illinois eviction procedures vary significantly depending on where your property is located. The notice requirements are the same statewide for 5-Day and 10-Day Notices, but 30-Day Notices and court procedures differ by jurisdiction.
| Jurisdiction | 30-Day Notice Rules | Court Format | Our Fee |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chicago | 30 / 60 / 120 days based on tenancy length. RLTO applies. | Zoom. Mandatory ERP mediation (+3-4 weeks). | $1,600 |
| Suburban Cook | 30 / 60 days. No 120-day requirement. | Zoom. ERP may apply. | $995 |
| DuPage | 30 days regardless of tenancy length. | In-person. Fastest (~10 weeks). | $895 |
| Kane & Will | 30 days. Standard Illinois requirements. | Mixed format. | $995 |
Notice preparation, complaint filing, all court appearances, settlement negotiation, full trial prep and representation, post-trial motions, and judgment for back rent. Filing fees (~$389 in Cook, less elsewhere) and process server costs are additional. Partial refund if tenant leaves before first court date.
What Happens After You Serve the Notice
Once the notice period expires and the tenant hasn’t cured the issue (paid the rent, fixed the violation, or moved out), you can file a Forcible Entry and Detainer action in the circuit court for the county where the property is located. In Cook County, your case will likely be routed through the Early Resolution Program (ERP) before reaching a judge, so you should understand how that process works before you file.
You’ll need the original notice, your proof of service (the affidavit), the current or most recent lease agreement, and the filing fee. In Cook County, the filing fee is approximately $389. DuPage and the collar counties charge less.
After filing, a process server or the county sheriff will serve the tenant with a summons. The tenant must receive the summons at least seven days before the court date. In Cook County, you’re required to use the Cook County Sheriff for the initial service attempt. The sheriff frequently fails to make service on the first try, and you’ll need to petition the court for a special process server to make a second attempt.
If you want the full walkthrough of everything from filing through sheriff enforcement, I wrote a detailed Illinois eviction process guide that covers each step and the realistic timelines for each county.
Download Free Illinois Eviction Notice Templates
These are the same forms we use in our practice. Fill them out carefully, follow the service requirements in this guide, and keep copies of everything you send.
5-Day Notice
Download PDF →
10-Day Notice
Download PDF →
30-Day Notice
Download PDF →
Affidavit of Service
Download PDF →
Sheriff Eviction Disclosure
Download PDF →
Frequently Asked Questions
No. Illinois law does not recognize email, text message, or any other electronic delivery as valid service for eviction notices. The notice must be physically delivered using one of the methods described above: personal service, substitute service, abode service, or certified mail. This is true even if your lease allows electronic communications for other purposes.
You don’t need one, but you should consider it seriously. We offer free notice preparation as part of our eviction services. A defective notice means starting over. If your tenant is three months behind on rent, a botched notice adds another five to 30 days to a process that’s already costing you $1,500 or more per month in lost income. Most of the landlords who call me already tried the DIY route and had their first filing dismissed over a notice deficiency.
Accepting partial payment during the cure period is risky. Some judges will interpret it as a waiver of the notice entirely, meaning you’d have to serve a new 5-Day Notice for the remaining balance. If you’re committed to proceeding with the eviction, the safest approach is to refuse partial payments until the notice period expires. After the five days pass, the legal situation around partial payment becomes less ambiguous, but I still recommend discussing the specifics with an eviction attorney before accepting anything.
Absolutely not. Self-help evictions, which includes changing locks, removing doors, shutting off utilities, and removing the tenant’s belongings, are illegal in Illinois under 765 ILCS 735/1. A tenant who is locked out can sue you for actual damages plus attorney fees, and in some cases you could face criminal charges. The only legal path to removing a tenant in Illinois is through the court eviction process, and that process starts with proper notice service.
It depends on the county and whether the tenant fights the case. A straightforward DuPage County eviction can wrap up in about 10 weeks. A contested Chicago eviction averages around 150 days, and that’s when everything goes smoothly. The notice stage is just the first step. I wrote a detailed breakdown of how much an eviction lawyer costs in Illinois that covers the full timeline and what each phase runs.
Yes. Even if the tenant’s lease was with the previous owner, you still need to serve proper notice before filing for eviction. If the tenant has a valid lease with time remaining, you’re generally bound by its terms until it expires. If the lease has already expired and the tenancy is month-to-month, you can serve a 30-Day Notice (or longer in Chicago, depending on tenancy length). If you just purchased an investment property and want to understand your options for existing tenants, call us for a free consultation to review your specific situation.
Related Guides for Illinois Landlords
- How Much Does an Eviction Lawyer Cost in Illinois? Full breakdown of fees, timelines, and what to expect at each stage.
- Tenant Trouble: What Happens When an Eviction Goes on Your Record What landlords and tenants need to know about eviction records, sealing, and long-term consequences.
- Chicago Lease Agreement Requirements RLTO-compliant lease provisions every Chicago landlord must include.
- Illinois Security Deposit Law Rules for holding, returning, and deducting from security deposits.
- How to Handle Late Rent Payments Through Zelle Why digital payments create legal traps for landlords pursuing eviction.
- How to Evict Squatters in Illinois The different legal framework for removing unauthorized occupants.